He was lying, of course. There was no evidence to even suggest that disabled people in the workforce were responsible for the growing productivity gap.

But if Brexit really is keeping that gap open, you can see why Mr Hammond would want to mislead the nation.

It goes against the “Brexit is good for you” narrative that the Tories are trying to encourage, against all sanity.

Personally, my understanding is that the productivity gap has happened because employers find it cheaper – due to Tory policies – to employ more people than to invest in more efficient machinery. Of course, if the opposite had been the case, we’d be discussing unemployment. The ideal would be the best balance between employee numbers and new machinery.

We’re not going to see that under a Tory government, though. Working people are commodities, to them. And they need Brexit in order to hammer our rights.

The uncertainty caused by Brexit is deterring companies from investing and hampering Britain’s ability to close its productivity gap with other leading developed countries, a Bank of England policymaker has warned.

Silvana Tenreyro, one of the nine members of Threadneedle Street’s monetary policy committee (MPC), which sets UK interest rates, said 75% of the decrease in growth of output per worker since the financial crisis a decade ago was due to manufacturing and financial services, but that a period of catch-up was feasible.

The MPC member said that in the three decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis Britain’s productivity grew by 2.3% a year on average, but in the decade since had slowed to 0.4% a year. The other six members of the G7 – the US, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan – had output per head 18% higher on average than the UK, leaving plenty of scope for Britain to close the gap.

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what do you expect from a tory that does not live in real world, to him real world is a spreadsheet, what ignorant people like him also seem to forget that a lot of things thrive on goodwill and charity, things that these simple minded fools take for granted, these figures don’t show in spreadsheet because there not paid for so imagine spreadsheat phil if suddenly all carers’ all volunteers and everyone else that does something for nothing decides no were not doing it any more and you had to pay for these free services, then you would realise that your ignorant comments just like some of your other tory friends are good at doing, like fist pumping smith, learing osbourne and the rest of your horrid deceitfull lying bunch would find that you have to fork out for these roles rather than get them for free. stick to doing spreadsheets that all you are good for!!!!

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